Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Matisse's paintings have inspired so many modern poems, why not another?Woman Before an Aquariumby Patricia Hampl

Woman before an Aquarium, 1921–23, Henri Matisse

The goldfish ticks silently,little finned gold watchon its chain of water,swaying over the rivulets of the brain,over the hard rocks and spiny shells.

The world is round, distortedthe clerk said when I insistedon a round fishbowl.Now, like a Matisse woman,I study my lesson slowly,crushing a warm pinecone

in my hand, releasingthe resin, its memory of wild nights,my Indian back crushingthe pine needles, the trapperstanding over me, his white-dead skin.

Fear of the crushing,fear of the human smell.A Matisse woman always wantsto be a mermaid,her odalique bodystretches pale and heavybefore her and the exotic wall hangings;the only power of the woman:to be untouchable.

But dressed, a simple Western face,a schoolgirl's haircut, the plain deskof ordinary work, she sitscrushing the pinecone of fear,not knowing it is fear.The paper before her is blank.

I am on the shore of the room,glinting insidewith the flicker of water,heart ticking with the messageof biology to a kindred species.The mermaid - not the enchantress,but the mermaid of double life -sits on the rock, combingthe golden strands of human hair,thinking as alwaysof swimming.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The current issue (Winter 2013) of American Arts Quarterly has a fascinating essay by poet and literary scholar Fred Turner on how we perceive the unknown. Read it here

Turner begins by describing a trip to the Galapagos Islands, where "the silence roared in one's ears" and "even the camera was confused." He continues by quoting Wittgenstein, Joseph Conrad, and Melville on the challenge of naming the unnameable. Frederick Turner (born 1943 in England) is an American poet and academic. He is the author of two full-length epic science fiction poems, The New World and Genesis; several books of poetry; and a number of scholarly works. He is currently Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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